5 Social Media Habits Businesses Need To Break

Published 6th December, 2016

Habits can be easy to fall into and your social media is no exception, while you might start out with a great plan full of innovative and unique ideas, it’s entirely possible you could fall back into old ways, forming habits that could have an overall impact on your business and your businesses social media following.

From posting too much to overly promotional content, there’s a lot of habits you can fall into that can lead your audience to unfollow your brand and look elsewhere. Perfecting social media requires a great plan and the ability to avoid some of the biggest habits out there. Here’s 5 of the most prominent social media habits and how you can effectively break them.

Don’t Ask For Shares, Likes And Retweets

There’s nothing worse than seeing a brand constantly posting updates asking their audience to like their posts, share their content or retweet their messages. Not only does this come across as a little desperate but it can also show that your business has nothing authentic to say and has to rely on asking for shares in order to get your content seen. Your brand should be producing interesting content that can like and share because they want to, not because they’ve been told.

Not Listening To Your Customers

Social media should be used for conversations, be it with your customers or other brands and a good conversation is never one sided. If all you’re doing is posting content you can’t ‘hear’ what your audience is saying to you. Constantly posting but never replying looks shady, it makes it seem like you’re not interested in your customers and answering any questions or queries they may have.

Automated Responses

You should be using your social media to strengthen your connections online, in a human and personal way, so using automated replies and responses shouldn’t even cross your mind. Your followers want to speak to you, the person at the other side, not a robot, which is why it’s up to you to reach out and write a personalised message, something which reflects the personality of your business.

Too Many Hashtags

Hashtags are a great way to provide context, categorise and participate in certain topics and when used correctly can have a significant impact on your business. However there are many out there who abuse hashtags, cramming as many into their posts as possible or using strangely long, specific hashtags that can’t be shared by others. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be using a maximum of 3 hashtags on your platform at once, in order to keep your posts short and snappy.

Auto DMs and Personal Messages

It’s nearly 2017, there’s no reason brands should still be sending out automatic DMs every time someone follows your account. While they might seem like a fun way to engage and welcome people to your brand, it can often come across as annoying, needy and too personal for a business to be sending. Automated messages aren’t a good idea, there’s no reason your business needs to spam your customers, if they’ve followed you, they’re already keen, they don’t need to be then welcomed through DM.

Social media is all about being social, if you’re looking to engage with your audience, boost your followers and ultimately establish your brand as a reliable and trustworthy brand, then it’s important you break your habits and do so now!